After catching a glimpse of an article in the paper about the first workshop a couple of weeks ago, and how busy/successful the event was, I decided to attend the second workshop by the Mid Ulster Council, held in the Terrace hotel Magherafelt, named “Making the web work for your business”, to see what all the fuss was about.

Firstly, the cold crisp March morning was enough to have anyone ready to go for an 8am Business Breakfast Workshop, and arriving at 7:45am I wasn’t surprised to find that the car park was full, as everyone must have been as eager to get into the heat as I was.

We were met with a selection of bacon and baps, as well as fruit salad and much needed coffee. The room was full of local businesses and it’s safe to say the workshop was a sell-out.

The workshop was started with the welcome note, given by the Mid Ulster District Council Chairman Cllr Trevor Wilson and after this, our fantastic host for the morning Daryl Conway, introduced the key speakers for the workshop and set us all the goal of coming away from the morning having learnt 1 thing.

In attendance we had the seasoned Digital Marketer Barry Adams, the website design expert Daithi Conlon and the PayPerClick Guru, Mark McColgan. A perfect panel of experts to guide the audience in all aspects to make the web work for their business.

After the initial introductions, the workshop turned into something that could only be described as “The Conway Show”, whereby Daryl has a series of questions for each member of the panel that picked information from each of their sectors but also informed the audience of some very insightful information.

Once the time limit had been reached, the floor was open to questions for the speaker and I got to pick Marks brain on a PPC aspect that has been bugging me. Weather to raise brand awareness more, or to concentrate on sales for a new business/website? and his answer was simple… both at the same time.

As soon as the questioning was finished, each expert was allowed to give a 1-minute elevator pitch to persuade members of the audience to attend their Mini-workshop that was located in different areas of the hotel. Different strategies were taken, however I decided to opt in on Marks mini workshop as I felt he could offer some great advice on areas I want to implement in my business, and I was right. His mini workshop was very informative and safe to say I surpassed the goal of the day after learning a range of different things related to pay-per-click.

As for the other 2 mini workshops, I’m sure they also went as smoothly.

When all mini workshops were completed, we all reconvened in the main function room of the hotel and Daryl closed the workshop with a final speech and some questionnaire completing.

All-in-all, a very informative and worthwhile morning, and I look forward to attending the “Selling on Social Media” workshop on the 28th of March.